Customer Reviews

Tome of the Undergates (The Aeons' Gate, Book 1)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"'I need more. I need ...to know that I'm doing the right and proper thing.'

'You'll never figure that one out," he answered decisively. "There's no way to know what the right and proper thing is, you see. Ask a Karnerian, a Sainite, a shcit and a dragonman the same question, they'll all tell you something different.'"

In a lot of ways, I think that we've reached the point where subversions have simply gone too far. Tome of the Undergates is about a merry group of adventurers, going off on a fetch quest. Except that they're not merry, and, while they are adventurers, they're far deeper than that cavalier title conveys. Each of them is a fair bit more interesting than they first appear. In a twist that is perhaps realistic for a group of severely flawed, violent characters thrust together, everyone hates everyone else. This is not the kind of hate that is eventually replaced by hugs and I Love You's. No. This is the kind of hate where hugs and I love You's are met with dialogue like:

'Is this the part where I'm supposed to cry?'

The thunder stopped with her heart; her face screwed up.

'Wh-what?'

'After this delightful little chat about standing tall against the human menace, are we supposed to be charming little friends? Am I supposed to break down in your puny arms and reveal, through tears, some profound insight about the inherent folly of hatred as you revel in your ability to bridge the gap between peoples? Afterwards, we will go prancing through some meadows so you can show me the simple beauty of a spiderweb or a pile of deer dung or whatever it is your worthless, stupid race thinks is important?'"

And, at first, I thought it was an awesome concept. But there's a problem. When you have six people who fight constantly, and they never come to like each other, and they're together for the whole book, it never ends. The standard arc of: Dislike -> Fight -> Tearful Make Up, which I'm confident every one of us is thoroughly sick of by now, is replaced with: Dislike -> Fight -> Ma-no, Fight -> Fight -> Make u-, no Fight -> Fight. Sykes's characters seem promising to start, but, at the end, you realize that the promise is all there is. You never get a centimeter deeper than you were in the first half; their relationships never change one iota.

Besides characterization, the book's other main element is combat. In this department, things are also a mixed bag. The fighting is, frequently, quite well done. Abysmyth demons are suitably powerful to scare the crap out of the reader the first few times they appear. Unfortunately, their appearance is rarely enough for character's to shelve whatever witty remarks they were about to make. Now, these are frequently hilarious, but they sap all of the energy out of the fight. The book's opening battle felt something like Obliveon's dialogue trees, where everything freezes frame while you calmly discuss rumors with your companions until you're ready to get back to the killing. Still, it's not even close to enough to break the battle scenes, and some fights, especially toward the end, are great sources of visceral chaos.

In his interview with Aidan [...], Sykes said:

"It's actually a surprisingly philosophical book. Not the overt, beard-stroking, "what is a chestnut" kind of philosophy, but the sort that delves deep into the psyche of people without being boring. It takes the standard idea of the adventurer in fantasy and asks the questions that are presumed to be answered in the genre: what drives someone to become an adventurer, who is largely presumed to be a graverobber, thief and unprofessional assassin? Would a group composed of many different races, religions and professions really get along so well as to perform a quest? How can they presume a benevolent deity is on their side when they continue to suffer and die? How can they presume that they are in the right when they continue to cause others to suffer and die?"

It's true, Sykes does bring up several interesting questions. The problem is that, like with the characterization, a fascinating premise is all you get. None of the issues are ever explored. Instead, they're simply voiced by one character or another. Asper questions how she can be doing good while she follows such a bloodthirsty bunch. At the end of the book, Asper still questions exactly the same thing. There are no answers here. Again, perhaps that's more realistic, but it's certainly not more satisfying.

The prose is the only great thing about Tome that I don't have to qualify at all. It's descriptive, and manages to be atmospheric when appropriate, but it's also down to earth always amusing. That being said, Tome has some of the most unflinchingly modern prose I've ever read in fantasy, so if you had trouble with Morgan's `55s, you may have some issues here. It's well worth acclimatizing yourself, though, because some moments are truly hilarious:

[When having a conversation with a Siren]
"'I ...I do not have a name, I am afraid,' she replied meekly. 'I have never had a use for one.'

'Everyone needs a name,' Dreadaeleon quickly retorted. 'What else would we call you?'

'Screechy.' Denaos nodded. 'Screechy MacEarbleed.'"

Tome is quite big. Alright, it's not quite Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams, but it's a respectable 692 pages, hardback. And it should not be. Tome is not a sprawling epic fantasy; it is a book of a single group of characters that go on a simple mission. The pacing in the book feels fast, and there is generally always at least one character in mortal danger, but it goes on for far too long to be effective. The book opens with a (now infamous) fight scene. It could be a dramatic way to open the book, but it goes on for one hundred and sixty pages. It is not a massive engagement featuring thousands of soldiers and munitions that crack the earth. It is six adventurers killing some pirates. Then some more pirates. Then some more pirates. Then some frogmen allied with the pirates. Then some more frogmen. Then some more frogmen. Then things finally get interesting, but by that point I just wanted everyone to calm down and do something that doesn't involve killing someone. Like have tea.

Essentially, Tome of the Undergates is a seven hundred page book that has the content of a novel half its size. If fifty percent of the fighting was removed, and seventy five percent of the infighting went the same way, it could be quite good. As it is now, however, it is a colossal exercise in maintaining the status quo. At the beginning of the book, the characters have a magic book, hate each other, and have a series of interesting internal debates. At the end of the book, the characters have regained their magic book, still hate each other, and still have several philosophical puzzles to grapple with. Yes, it's not quite the ordinary set up for adventurers, but, by that point, we've seen it before. At the beginning of the book. And I don't think we needed to see it again.

I realize that this review is a bit harsh on Sykes. Tome of the Undergates is not a bad book. It's entertaining, even laugh out loud funny on occasion, but I was expecting more. I haven't given up on Sykes, but I can't say that I wasn't disappointed.

Let me begin with the obvious: I am not a professional reviewer, and more importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed TOME OF THE UNDERGATES, by Sam Sykes. The appeal for me comes from intriguing characters and fast-paced action that kept me turning pages; tension among the band of not-so-merry misfits who embark on a quest of epic proportion; humor that left me laughing out loud; and the discovery that beneath all of this Sykes begins to explore important questions.

At first glance the characters fight without conviction or cause and I did not connect with them right away. Sykes introduces the quintet of characters slowly and they grow to match the seriousness of the quest that sends them to the edge of the world and finally into the maw of evil. The irony that the five protagonists see themselves as lower than pondscum even after they survive unspeakable horrors, and their struggle with this, lifts them from entertaining to memorable. Sykes's effort in revealing the characters in a deliberate pace worked for me. He uses cutting humor, especially during the squabbles among the various members of the band. The exchanges reminded me of siblings fighting, and they often had me laughing out loud. However, the dialogue shows more: the five do not like each other, and often confess the desire to do away with the others; yet at the same time, they do not like themselves.

Beneath the action Sykes begins to explore some important and timely questions: the fear of the other, helped along far too often by stereotyping and the teachings of elders, the very apropos discussion of who is a true believer and who is a heathen and the dictate to kill the one who does not believe in the correct god, and the questioning of the purpose of life, the "Why am I here?" conundrum. One of Sykes's accomplishments is the fact that he makes me care for the five to an extend that I can understand their desperation and anger at fate or the gods for placing them into the lives they must live.

Sykes manages to introduce these more serious concepts without missing a beat in providing this reader with a story that is entertaining and fun. I am very much looking forward to meeting the characters again in the next book of the series.

Despite the atrocious cover art, I was excited to read this book. It promised a stirring adventure with a team of adventurers but fell far short of even being entertaining. This story was poorly conceived and poorly written. Though Sykes had been compared to Abercrombie and Lynch, his forced prose is Eddings-like and his Erikson like uber-characters are unconvincing in every aspect.

Nominally, the idea of a group of adventurers that don't get along is intriguing, but their disagreements are handled with the subtlety of the Three Stooges and the pointless action of Michael Bay. The characters alternately and for little reason punch, hit, slam each others heads into the ground and contemplate backstabbing each other. Their reactions to the physical blows and bloody noses is mild annoyance. And that is one of the biggest problems with the book; the characters interactions with each other never seems real. The eloquent pirate captain doesn't seem real. The ornery ship captain doesn't seem real. Their internal monologues don't seem real. It's a book of contrived situations that the characters enter but never really interact with.

Additionally, the pacing is lacking in key areas. Other have questioned the decision by starting the book with a 200 page fight, and those concerns are valid, but worse, to me, is the constant interruption of each action sequence with internal monologues that consist of redundant questions of the "How did I get myself in this situation?" variety.

The leader, a silver haired short guy, somehow commands the respect of his murderous crew although we never see why they are loyal to him. Worse, every bad situation he gets into is solved by his blacking out and then later regaining consciousness to realize his enemies are all dead. There a kind of reason for this, but it leads to far too many uses of cheap narrative tricks.

The plot is as basic as you can imagine; less complex than some fairy tales. I was hoping for a Scott Lynch-like book, but sadly this tome has only unrealistic characters, embarrassingly bad dialogue, poor pacing, underwhelming prose, and a plot as old as the hills. This is one book I'd actively recommend avoiding.

Disclaimers up front: I've met Sam Sykes and talked with him at a party where Pyr bought the drinks. I like him and we have similar tastes in fantasy.

Let's get the `A-word' out of the way first. There are going to be inevitable comparison's between Mr. Sykes Aeon's Gate series and Mr. Abercrombie's First Law series. Both are published by Pyr, both have very flawed -to borderline unlikeable- characters and both have torture and a bit of the old ultraviolence. And, to be frank, if Abercrombie appeals to you, you'll love this book. I don't like Joe Abercrombie's books (I gave away my First Law books) but I enjoyed Mr. Sykes work with some caveats.

First the good:
Sam Sykes has a good grasp of story, I find. He excels at raising the stakes, in fact `then it gets worse' seems to be tattooed on every page in this book. His monsters are tremendously imaginative and suitably monstrous. The action is mostly well-described and the races are inventive twists on archetypes you'd read in Dragonlance books. I liked the schict, his riff on elves, the most. They're cold-hearted racist bastards but that fits the world. The purple amazons are very cool. One of the characters, a semi-cowardly rogue grows on you the more you read about him.
The cultures and world-building are first-rate. Mr. Sykes excels at creating a cohesive world with competing cultures. In fact, wanting to see more of the world is something that's going to keep me buying the sequels. The plot is straightforward and the characters mostly succeed due to their merits and skills as opposed to Deus Ex Machina.
There's some interesting passages on violence and the use of violence that I found intriguing. It reminds me a bit of David Gemmell in that respect. It's something I think about and write about myself.
I'm interested in reading more.

Now the bad:
The characters are all more or less unlikeable. The protagonist is either insane or is a host for a greater power that likes to/needs to take over his body. He also whines a lot. He's depicted as the leader of his un-merry band of adventurers but he lacks the qualities of a good leader. He seems to just have the `main character' stamp on his forehead that allows him to be in charge without earning it. There is a lot of bickering and backstabbing in the adventurers group but there never seems to be an resolution or consequences. That undercuts the character development the author is working very hard at. No one seems to like each other, they're constantly threatening to kill each other but...no one ever does. No one ever takes the step of acting on their threats and as a result the tension gets diluted. They also don't work together well and that should be their undoing but...it never quite is.
Several of the characters have `hidden powers', which weakens any actual heroism they could show. If just one character was like that, I could maybe buy it but the main character has it, the priestess has it, the dragonman seems to be made out of it.
I could nit pick a bit more but I'll end with this: the characters don't seem to react realistically. Its implied that several characters have sex near the end of the book but nothing changes between them afterwards. They don't act or talk any differently towards each other, that I could see. This may be something Mr. Sykes is planning to develop in his sequel but it was a mistake to leave it out of this volume.

Summary: It was an entertaining read. Since I enjoyed it, I'm bumping it up a notch, despite the flaws. It bears some of the same sins as Erickson (no more whiny heroes, please!) and Abercrombie (just give me a hero, damn it) but it also has the same merits. This is not Tolkien, it is dark but adventurous. If it sometimes sounds like someone's home-made D&D module, it's a pretty awesome D&D module.

Recommended to people who like dark fantasy.

Sam Sykes just totally shocked me, I wasn't sure if these books would be very good. I normally read Urban Fantasy or Historical Fantasy Romance, but I just wasn't sure if they would be any good. Then I saw it. One of my most favorite of authors had endorsed the book.
Diana Gabaldon had given him a positive review. Most of the time I will not buy a book unless one of my favorite authors has endorsed it. I go to their websites, and check on their blogs and I've never bought a book I didn't like after using this method. So when I saw that Diana Gabaldon had give such a good review I decided to take a chance on it.

[...]
I was so Amazed by the characters in this book. Sam Sykes described them in a way they were so real, it was almost like you could feel them with you. The details in the descriptions are what's so very important. That's what leads my mind to enter the authors created world.

Buy the book, you'll feel yourself go right off into the authors world and pretty soon you'll be in a different world where exist sea monsters, ghosts and ancestors of species long 'almost' gone, and then you'll be sitting there drinking your coffee when all of a sudden you realize that you can take a breath and relax, because those arrows are not really coming at you, and those enemies with the swords dripping blood is not really dripping on your kitchen floor.

Action and camaraderie, and self-exploration and a common goal to save their world.
"It's all good" <-- my favorite saying.

So Be sure to buy both of Mr. Sykes books:
[...]


[...]

and if you by chance have never read one of the greatest Historical Fantasy Fiction Series of all time, then you Must get Diana Gabaldon Series, it's, well, it's just epic, truly epic.

[...]

Sam Sykes is a very funny man. Reading his tweets and his blog makes this abundantly clear. He's not just funny, he's extremely likeable. When Tome of the Undergates was released the reviews were mixed. Some people thought it was wonderful and funny, others decried the pacing and crude humour. So, while eager to read the book, I approached it with a bit of trepidation; especially since Sykes has repeatedly stated that a reviewer's first duty is to be honest. What if I didn't like it? Luckily, despite some hiccups, I had a great time with this book.

Right from the first few pages, it's clear that this book isn't your regular story. In the prologue we're not just painted a quick sketch of where we will find ourselves once the curtain lifts and with whom, but we also encounter the dry humour that pervades this novel throughout. This humour has been the subject of much criticism and even though I can see why it might not be for some people, it had me chuckling more often than groaning, even while rolling my eyes. The prologue also firmly grounds the novel in the Sword and Sorcery tradition, something only strengthened by the sequence that follows, a battle lasting well over a hundred and sixty pages. Said battle containing both a lot of sorcery and huge amounts of swords, knives, knuckles and arrows. Starting out with that battle and sticking with it for so long was a gutsy move on Sykes' part. It sets a roiling pace, which leaves the reader little time to find their footing in the novel as the hits keep coming.

One of the complaints I've seen a lot is that the furious pace in the first third of the novel leaves little time for the character development of the main characters. I have to say I don't totally agree with this assessment. Yes, the character development is sparse and we certainly don't get a lot of motivation for the actions and decisions of our protagonists, but Sykes does have snippets of information in the narrative that made later revelations click even more for me. In a way it's very subtle, since it's easy to be distracted by the bickering, the gore and the action. Still, in some cases it would have been nice to have had a bit more background, such as in the case of the Serrant. I still haven't completely figured out what she is and how she got to be on the Riptide with Lenk and his crew and their charge. Why was she cursed and how does it work? Hopefully though this will be explained somewhere in the series.

The last one hundred fifty or so pages the pace finally slows down and I really enjoyed them most because suddenly a lot becomes clear(er); every character gets his or her back story explained to a point, though some more than others. While Denaos is my favourite of the bunch thus far, you know what they say about women and bad boys I guess, the vignettes that touched me most were Asper's and Gariath. Asper's because it shed such an unexpected light on her piety and Gariath's because it was truly a beautiful and evocative scene. It was such a soft, fragile scene, which was surprising given the way Gariath is portrayed as a maniacal, murderous monster during most of the book.

The Tome of the Undergates is not a book to read in bits and pieces. I found this out the hard way, as I usually read in snatches - over lunch, during the baby's nap, in the evening after dinner and before bed - and I often found it hard to get back into the story. To find my feet again and to re-orientate myself on where we were exactly. It reads quicker and more enjoyable in larger chunks, as I found out when I got sick and had to stay in bed all day and I fairly flew through the remaining four hundred pages of the book.

In all, I enjoyed this author's debut novel and I'm curious to see where Sykes will take the series, both in terms of character development and of solving the quest. I'm looking forward to its sequel, Black Halo, due out next year. If you're not fazed by blood, bodily excretions and bickering and you like a fast-paced, action-packed story, The Tome of the Undergates is definitely worth the read!

Tome of the Undergates throws you into a world with Dragonmen and weird as hell fish monster people. What more could you want in a brilliant book?

I kid you not, I got so involved in this book that my copy is falling apart after only a month from me dragging it literally everywhere I went. Now, granted, there are a fair number of "meh" to "blah" to even "aaarrrghhhh" reviews for this book here and elsewhere, but I think I can see why. This book is not for you if you want some Jordan or Tolkien or the like. Yes, I would call it epic fantasy, but Sykes definitely brings a very modern twist to the genre. There are very graphic and gratuitous fight scenes; in fact, expect to spend the majority of your reading having some pretty gory scenes described and played out. It screams Michael Bay sometimes, but Sykes does it well enough that its actually quite thrilling, as any good fight scene should be. The characters are all tragically, comically, and dementedly flawed and in very different ways, leading to lots of schoolyard humor and name-calling during their frequent spats. I guess this grates on some, but I found it very entertaining; I've seen far more acclaimed authors attempt this and fail miserably, so it was nice to see the heroes/anti-heroes be portrayed as petty like the rest of us have all been. The monsters and creatures are highly original, as is the approach to various archetypes (pirate that only speak w/ proper British flair? YES); that said, I can clearly see ties to multiple mythologies and other classics, and the lit geek in me was so happy to see this done tastefully and sans cliche. I guess I can sum this up by saying there's an appreciable level of camp (think Repo! The Genetic Opera for those of you familiar; screwball but makes you think) but there's also quite a bit of classic epic story writing and some really innovative plot points and characters well-worth checking out.

I don't read many fantasy novels. I attended a John Scalzi book signing in Phoenix when he was promoting Little Fuzzy and was introduced to his colleague, Sam Sykes. I bought a copy of Tome of the Undergates because Sykes is an odd, but amusing fellow.

It isn't often that I purchase a book with sufficient heft that it would serve as a handy bludgeon. If the story failed to entertain me, I could smack the author upside the head with such a book and perhaps he or she would do better next time around.

Mr. Sykes is safe for now. I read his book and enjoyed the humor, violence, and flawed characters. To celebrate finishing this massive tome, I used one of those brick-and-mortar-bookstore-that-shall-not-be-named 40%-off coupons, to buy a copy of the next book in the series, Black Halo (The Aeons' Gate, Book 2). Although it has quite a few pages too, my copy of Black Halo is a paperback and not nearly as useful as a weapon. I hope I won't need it.

A guy named Cirk recommended this book to me repeatedly, so I bought it. By page 57 I knew two things: that it was time to order the second book in the series, and that this author was going to be annoying to read. It turns out I was wrong on the first count. I'd set aside all of Monday evening to read it, and the book is only 500 pages, so I figured I'd have the book read by the time the sequel arrived on Wednesday. I was wrong because of the second part. It's a little hard to keep track of who is talking to who, and there is a lot of dialogue. Often internal dialogue. I didn't finish those 500 pages until Wednesday night, hours after the second book had arrived. By page 57 I was also quite ready to be done with the pirate attack. But I wasn't. By somewhere around page 150 I was happy the pirate attack was finally over. Until I noticed on a review adorning the back of the book that the pirate fight was 200 pages long...

This book has one horribly pathetic editing/research failure in it. The author describes coconuts falling from trees as they appear in grocery store. Now, it could be that his alternate fantasy world has coconuts that do that, but I suspect not. More likely, the author has no idea how coconuts grow and the editor didn't catch it either. He also used the concept of cherubs incorrectly, but so does the rest of the world, so I can understand that. Very few people realize that cherubim are horrific monsters with animal feet, four faces, upside down wings (and right-side up wings) which are (though without Biblical authority) covered in eyes. And really, they'd fit right into his world if he knew that. The cherubs could hang out with the three headed shark, or the fish-headed....whatever they are.

Overall the book was a fun read when I could keep the dialogue straight. It's about an adventuring party. The rogue sneaks around and watches his party mates peeing. The wizard pees himself when he casts spells. The healer is pissed off she can't kill anything and is useless. The whole party hates each other and debates killing each other all the time. It is a very high fantasy world, where completely unreasonable things happen and these idiots somehow manage to not die constantly. Often through luck more than skill. The author claims it's a philosophical book. I think it's a fantasy book with too much boring internal dialogue.